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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

‘Our house is on fire’: Teen raises climate alarm at Davos

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DAVOS: Camera crews push past tycoons and government leaders to get a close shot of the unlikely star at Davos this year: a Swedish teen with long braids and a big message for the world.


Greta Thunberg blinks into the cameras of the media throng as she emerges timidly from a closed-door panel discussion at the World Economic Forum, the annual get-together of the rich and powerful.


“She silenced the room… The girl was extremely moving,” head of Expedia Group Mark Okerstrom said.


“It was very inspiring,” Olivier Puech, a top executive at American Tower Corporation agreed.


During her speech, which she repeated for journalists barred from the room, the 16-year-old climate activist said “our house is on fire”.


“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope,” she said, furrowing her brow and fiddling awkwardly with her notes.


“But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic,” she said.


Thunberg with her small stature and round cheeks looks younger than 16. She first grabbed the spotlight in August when she began staging “school strikes for the climate”, skipping classes on Fridays to protest in front of Swedish parliament.


But she drew global attention when she delivered a fiery speech to world leaders at last month’s UN climate talks in Poland. Inspired, tens of thousands of schoolchildren from around the world have followed her lead and ditched school to demand serious action against climate change.




‘UNTHINKABLE PRICE TAG’


“At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories, but their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag,” Thunberg said, “We can still fix this. But unless we recognise the overall failures of our current system, we most probably don’t stand a chance,” she warned.


— AFP



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